Toronto chief comments on serial killer angers community

Haran Vijayanathan, executive director of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention in Toronto, speaks at a vigil for the victims of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur in Toronto, Canada. Vijayanathan, who helped host the candlelight vigil for the victims, believes police didn't step up their investigation until Andrew Kinsman, a prominent white man in Toronto's gay community, went missing. Most of the other alleged victims are South Asian or Middle Eastern. (AP Photo/Rob Gillies)

A suggestion by Toronto's police chief that an alleged serial killer would have been arrested sooner if the public had been more cooperative with investigators has angered LGBTQ residents and could worsen already strained relations, community leaders said Tuesday.

Chief Mark Saunders told the Globe and Mail that "nobody" came to officers with information in 2012 when police launched a special task force called Project Houston to investigate three missing South Asian or Middle Eastern men from the city's gay village.

Police didn't arrest landscaper Bruce McArthur until this year and have since charged him with six counts of first-degree murder.

"I've heard a lot of sources say certain things, and had those sources said those things thing when we had Project Houston, I think there is a very strong potential that the outcome could have been different," Saunders said. "We knew that people were missing and we knew we didn't have the right answers. But nobody was coming to us with anything."

Haran Vijayanathan, executive director of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention advocacy group, said Saunders should retract the comments.

In this combo of file photos provided by the Toronto police shows five men who Toronto landscaper Bruce McArthur is accused of killing, from left: Selim Essen, 44, Sorush Mahmudi, 50, Dean Lisowick, Andrew Kinsman, 49, and Majeed Kayhan, 58. Some of the known and suspected victims of the alleged serial killer fit a pattern: people on the margins of Canadian society whose disappearance attracted little attention, until Kinsman, a LGBQT activist and former bartender with many friends, vanished. (Toronto police via AP, File) ()

"This is actually just going to push that divide a bit further and not allow people to work together," Vijayanathan said. "The chief is creating his own problems now."

Toronto city Councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam, whose district includes Toronto's Gay Village, said she was shocked by the comments and called them inaccurate.

McArthur, 66, is charged with first-degree murder in their deaths, as well as the presumed deaths of 44-year-old Esen, Majeed Kayhan, 58, and Dean Lisowick, either 43 or 44. Police believe there are more victims.